Not Fire, Not Ice :There Is Not A River Wide
Haldir was not a complicated elf. This was not to say he was unintelligent, for nothing could be further from the truth. It was simply that where others saw the world in shades of grey, Haldir saw mostly jetty black and clear, opaline white. To him, elves were, for the very greatest part, good, and Men somewhat less so while orcs, Nazgûl, and other such creatures were evil. In his lengthy experience, very seldom did the twain meet. Good beings did not often commit evil, and fell beings were not known for their acts of compassion.
Thus it was next to impossible for him to comprehend what his brother was saying.
"I tell you truly, Haldir, they did not harm her at all, and indeed released us upon her command." Rúmil declared, allowing Lalaith a moment more to flutter about him, washing the dried blood from his already-healed wounds and out of his hair before entreating her, "Meril nîn, you are more distraught than I, will you not sit and rest?"
Haldir's sharp ears heard the endearment, and his equally acute easily perceived how Lalaith's hands lingered on his brother in ways that spoke of a relationship beyond that of merely healer and patient. He said nothing, however, for this was not the time to inquire about how in Ilúvatar's name Naurë had permitted such a thing to come to pass…
Naurë. Just thinking her name sent a fresh shaft of pain through him as he recalled his first reaction to the news that his brother and a group of Imladris elves escorted a woman—just one, and young—toward Lothlórien. Knowing Lalaith would never leave Naurë behind in Imladris, he had believed his dear friend dead, and a great wave of grief had crashed upon him. Sunk in sorrow, he had not gone to meet the party at the border, but had sat in his talan as memories washed over him.
Memories of joy, of laughter, but also of pain and heartache. Haldir recalled how Naurë had laughed so uproariously at the narrowly-averted 'great romance' of a dwarf's ardour for him, but also how she had cried when she'd learnt of how his parents had died, the weighty responsibility of raising the infant Rúmil falling on his inexperienced but devoted shoulders.
He recalled how angry she could make him, angry like no other living being in Arda, but also how deeply her despair had run when her well-meant foolhardiness had resulted in his near-death. Naurë had thought him insensible the entire time, but he had seen the way she'd lifted one of his daggers, how she had held the edge to her wrist as regret for his injury overcame her. She'd never known that his sudden stirring, as if beset by fevered nightmares, had been a pretension to draw her attention.
In the thirty-four years they had been apart after that, they had exchanged letters. Haldir had watched and lamented as her handwriting, once striding boldly across the page, had become increasingly spidery, as if it took all her effort to control the tremors of her aged hands to move quill across parchment. Finally the letters had begun to come in Lalaith's neat, clear script and he'd felt the first real fear in his heart at her inevitable demise.
Haldir had come to Imladris last year specifically to see Naurë again, having learnt from Galadriel that her daughter's husband's apprentice would be taking an extended visit to the Last Homely Home. The sight of her, frail and bent, grey and withered, had struck him hard and taken every measure of his considerable self-control to conceal his dismay. She was the same Naurë she had ever been, however: irreverent, naughty-minded, and more than willing to irk him for her own amusement. It had been a splendid reunion, only slightly marred by her warning of her impending death, and the memory of it would live within him forever.
Even so, with so many such warnings, the shock of her passing had rendered him dumb for a full minute. That the world could carry on without Naurë in it… no, that simply was not right. Looking about him at the golden-leafed mellyrn, Haldir felt they might be somehow diminished in glory, as if their beauty had dimmed due to one less light in the world.
When Rúmil and Lalaith had finally arrived in Lothlórien and climbed up to his talan, where he sat staring out the window at the sunset, their grave faces had not disinclined him to grief. "When did she pass?" he asked, his normally smooth voice ragged with sorrow.
Rúmil had blinked. "You speak of Naurë?" At Haldir's nod, he continued. "She is not dead, brother, but taken by orcs."
Haldir leapt to his feet at that, his chair crashing over. "She is what?" he demanded, eyes flashing with fear and fury as he recalled what had happened to the wife of Elrond, Celebrían, when that elleth had been abducted by orcs. Even after rescue by her twin sons and healing by her inestimable husband, the abuse she had suffered had rendered her incapable of dealing with life in Arda, and she had swiftly left for the Havens, a swan-ship carrying her West to the healing land of Aman.
And Naurë, for all her fiery wit and strength, was no elleth. She was but a human, with all a human's frailties of body and spirit-- at her age it would most likely be a mercy for death to find her. He said as much to Rúmil and Lalaith.
"Hm, yes, about her age," Rúmil began, obviously somewhat at a loss to explain what he meant. "It seems that… you recall, do you not, the tonic she pressed upon you?" At his brother's nod, he continued. "It would seem that Naurë was working on a stronger version of it, one that could save Man from the very brink of death. She succeeded in creating it, but there was… an accident."
At this, Rúmil's gaze flicked to Lalaith, and the woman bowed her head as if in shame whilst twisting her skirt into vicious knots, but the elf only said, "Naurë was given an overdose of the remedy, and it greatly affected her… it has made the years fall from her, Haldir, and so quickly that we feared for her to become a babe once more, had not Elrond been able to create the antidote!"
Haldir blinked once, then twice; he turned to look at Lalaith, who had released her death-grip on the fabric of her skirts and now stood smoothing the wrinkles from it. "It is true," she confirmed. "Nana now appears younger than I, and you need not fear that infirmity will increase the danger she is in… the orc-leader said he had been commanded to keep her safe, and he would honour that command."
"And orcs are ever trustworthy," Haldir snapped, clasping his hands behind his back to keep from doing damage to some undeserving piece of furniture in his ire, even as his head whirled from the extraordinary things he'd been told. "There was naught you could do to keep her safe?"
"Nothing, brother," Rúmil replied, a glint coming to his eye at the accusation. "We were outnumbered ten to one, perhaps more, and I feared that the women might be imperiled if we insisted on fighting. As it was, Naurë bargained for our lives by agreeing to go willingly."
"She would do that," Haldir muttered unhappily as he paced around the room. "She would go into the fires of Mount Doom itself to keep Lalaith safe." He turned suddenly, startling them. "And I would do the same for Naurë." He strode to the ladder connecting the talan to the leaf-strewn floor of the Golden Wood. "I shall leave tomorrow to retrieve her; shall you accompany me, Rúmil?"
"If you do, Rúmil, know that I shall come as well," Lalaith warned swiftly. "I will not be parted from you."
Halfway down the ladder, Haldir looked over the edge of the talan to where his brother and his love stood staring at each other, their gazes startling in their intensity.. "I give you this evening to discuss the matter," he told them. They did not seem to have heard him, but their body language was subtly altered; Rúmil stood more loosely, as if poised to spring, and Lalaith's entire demeanor was yielding, as if she would welcome any pursuit he cared to attempt.
He sighed and left them to it, feeling very old indeed. If he were to leave at first light it would be a long night of preparation. As he spoke with the other elves and determined who would accompany him on his rescue, his thoughts kept returning to what his brother and Lalaith had told him… Naurë was young again, in body if not in spirit. His heart rejoiced at her newly expanded lifetime, even as he marveled at such a thing, and his mourning over her death changed into rejoicing that she lived still.
Haldir had many questions. Had Rúmil yet realized that this remedy could be applied to Lalaith, preserving her from the aging and death that would eventually part them? Would Naurë take it always, thus rendering her as immortal as any elf? Miserable at the limitations of a lively mind trapped in an elderly body, she had been resigned to her passing-- eager for it, almost. How had her escape from death's clutches affected her? Was she disappointed to be thwarted of the oblivion she'd craved, or thrilled to have youth again?
"I shall learn the answers soon enough," he promised aloud, startling the other elves ranged around him as they studied a map of the area, trying to discern where the orcs might have taken Naurë from the description Rúmil had given. "I shall put the questions to Naurë herself, for we will find her." He looked at each of them in turn, staring into their eyes that they might see his determination. "We will find her."
***
Naurë was hungry. She plopped onto the ground whilst shooting a filthy look at Uglúk. "I will not walk a step farther," she declared, "until I have something to eat."
The leader of the orcs turned and she supposed he might have scowled at her, though it was impossible to tell, as he was incredibly hideous and his normal expression was but one huge scowl. "You have refused all food we have provided."
"It was human flesh!" she exclaimed, feeling her belly churn at the memory of how they had offered a chunk of jerky to her the previous day, giggling so stupidly as she took it that she had immediately become suspicious and demanded to know its origin. One of the orcs, dimmer even than the others, had told her with glee that it had been a Rohirrim mail-rider in its previous incarnation, and had received a face full of vomit as Naurë dropped the jerky and emptied her stomach on him.
"It was human flesh," she repeated softly, eyes locked with that of Uglúk. He was not an orc, as he'd explained proudly not long after taking her from her granddaughter and dumping her in the bottom of the boat, but something called an Uruk-hai. The result of uniting orcs with goblins, Uruks were smarter, stronger, and sturdier than their cousins, and this one led a sizeable band of orcs and other Uruk-hai in the territory east of the Anduin and north of Mordor.
"I was one of the group who captured the Hobbits of the Fellowship," Uglúk had revealed earlier that day, "until their escape." He frowned. "I was demoted." Obviously a sore point for him, he had settled for releasing his tension by beating one of his orcs to death. Afterwards he seemed in such an excellent mood that he had permitted the others to share with Naurë their meal, giving her day a turn for the worse.
"Tis a delicacy to us," Uglúk now informed her loftily. "They thought to honour you."
"I sincerely doubt that," Naurë replied sourly. "And I mean what I say," she warned. "I will not budge lest you give me decent food!"
Uglúk shrugged. "Bring her," he told his orcs, and a pair of dark, dirt-encrusted hands reached down to hoist her up and over a rancid-smelling shoulder. Naurë gagged at the odor.
"I would not vomit again, were I you," Uglúk said from the head of the group as they began the march once more. "Best to keep what little is in your stomach, for all we have with us is that of which you refuse to partake."
Closing her eyes, Naurë imagined all manner of pleasant things, of sweetly-smelling things, of beautiful things. She recalled Lalaith's face, glowing with love whenever she looked upon fair Rúmil; Elrond's when he laughed, and finally dredged up something about Haldir. Truly, she felt horrible that she could recall so little of him, for she'd been assured that they were the closest of friends. The incident with the dwarf was the sole thing she was able to envision in her head, and so she replayed it over and over, relishing the dwarf's stunned protests that such a beauteous creature as Haldir could be male, pintle or no, until she was actually giggling.
Uglúk spared his captive a glance. Already it had begun, he thought with no little satisfaction. Of the few Men they captured rather than killed, it did not take long for their minds to fail them, and laughing merrily was merely the first sign. He estimated she'd be barking like a warg by week's end, and in spite of the cold rain that began to fall upon them, felt cheered at the prospect.
meril nîn = my rose